Interesting question to ask as a Project Manager. Can you prove your worth? Sometimes I wonder, but then I see what everyone else does when I don’t get after them. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have a job. Until developers can talk directly to clients, clients can make good design decisions, and everyone gets their work done early with no scope creep, I’m safe.
Hat tip to Christian Connent
Project, Process & Business Improvement: Prove it
Prove it
Do you, as a project manager, add value to your project? Do you add value to your company? If you’re a PM, I’m sure the answer is a resounding “YES!” Okay, now prove it.
So you say, “My last project came in on time and under budget.” How do you know it would not have been the same without you? Or maybe even more under budget since your salary would not have been there. How do you know the project would not have been completed sooner without all those meetings? So, unless you can undertake identical projects with and without a PM, you cannot come up with quantitative financial data defining a PM’s value….after the fact.
Here’s a report on the Value of PM from the Center of Business Practices. The only comment I’d make is that the survey is based on 100 responses from PM practitioners, of which 59% were project managers. That’s like asking Congress if politics is a good thing.
If you are in a company without project management initiatives, you may want to measure your financial, productivity, customer, and process metrics for a period of time before implementing PM procedures and processes. Then you may have some comparative data. Otherwise you may only have those “touchy-feely” kind of data, such as personal testimonials, anecdotes and “I just know it’s good.”
Posted by Conrad Walton in Project Management
June 14th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Conrad,
While we are both wondering now - “how would they REALLY do without us on the project?” - I realize that we are here to people manage, task manage, and over control the true environment that everyone is accustomed to calling a ‘project’. I believe that most projects I work on have added value while I am managing it, although that is a somewhat narcissistic sounding analogy; I think that the added value here is CONTROL. We are the purveyors of control and environment.
The project manager, manages the project, the people involved in the project from business to client, as well as vendors and units. We are chaos controllers. Yea, that’s the ticket. We control the chaos and allow those around us the ability to accomplish the tasks and goals that fit their capabilities.
I hope that wasn’t a raw tangent.
June 14th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Control the chaos? Not a tangent at all. That’s why I named this blog “Spinning Chaos”. I think that controlling the chaos is the heart of the Project Manger’s job.
This sounds like the TV show “Get Smart”, where he worked for CONTROL and the bad guys were KAOS.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058805/
We’re really secret agents. Now, THAT’S a tangent. :-)
June 15th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
Can I write my own theme song? ;)
Conrad, you right on track now!
P.S. I ended up applying the chaos control today when I had three projects erupt serious issues (including the dastardly fiend…Scope Creep) and of course all between 10 am and 3 pm… I got home around 7:30pm
I love my job…